She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  Female athletes walk the line between hiding their sexuality and embracing or even exploiting it. In a 1919 Wimbledon match between Mrs. Lambert Chambers of England and Suzanne Lenglen of France, both women were assessed and compared based on their appearance rather than their skills on the court. Mrs. Chambers wore traditionally feminine and respectable garb, ostensibly overheating in long woolen skirts on the court and wearing a blazer in her off-court appearances. Mademoiselle Lenglen, meanwhile, played in short silk dresses and wore extravagant flapper-era fashion and makeup off the court. Critics praised and decried both women for their individual infractions, much like the media in the twenty-first century. Women cannot get it right: They are too feminine or too masculine, too fashionable or too dowdy, too attractive or not attractive enough.

  While male athletes can be recognized for their athletic endeavors only, a female athlete must also be judged on her appearance. In 2013, Wimbledon winner Marion Bartoli was criticized by British radio commentator John Inverdale, who concocted an imaginary conversation where Bartoli’s father informed her that she had to be a good athlete because she was “never going to be a looker.” Bartoli’s father seemed astonished by this presumption, but other media sources were quick to criticize Inverdale’s claim while simultaneously supporting it. An article in the Los Angeles Times compares Bartoli’s style of play to her “stocky, not tall and lithe” figure, claiming that “her serve is anything but smooth” and that she “pounds the ball with two hands from both sides.”[9] The author even belittles Bartoli’s victory by arguing that “Bartoli’s path was easier” because higher seeds in the tournament lost early matches.

  Another interesting aspect of 2013 Wimbledon was the seemingly delightful reality that Britain finally had a champion when Andy Murray won seventy-seven years after the last British champ; however, numerous media outlets and tennis resources failed to recognize that Britain already had a more recent Wimbledon champ, but that the champ was a woman. In 1977, Virginia Wade won the Wimbledon singles title, but her legacy has disappeared from history.

  Fighting Sports

  Fighting sports have long been considered primitive, and to a certain extent, this is true. Fighting may be one of the most primal of human activities after eating, sleeping, and sex. It is easy to imagine the earliest species of hominids swinging at one another over leftover meat or a closer proximity to the fire. But although we can only speculate as to the validity of this scenario, there is historical evidence that fighting was indeed considered sport in the ancient world. Wall paintings in Egypt from 2000 B.C.E. depict groups of men practicing various wrestling techniques. Poets and prose writers alike celebrated athleticism in ancient Greece. Nearly every society, existing and extinct, has a martial art or folk fighting style practiced by certain portions of its citizenry. It would be impossible for me to accomplish the purpose of this book, which is to explore the history of female fighters, and fully cover the history of fighting arts throughout the world. There are a number of excellent scholarly texts that have already accomplished that great feat. Instead, I will briefly outline the history of striking and grappling arts as they pertain to the history of female fighters.

  For the purpose of clarity, this section focuses on defining the primary fighting sports discussed in this book. Although nearly every culture can boast a unique fighting style, most hand-to-hand fight sports can be classified in three basic groups: striking, grappling, and a mixture of the two. There are numerous subgenres that fit within each of these broad spheres, and, of course, there is some overlap; however, to be concise, I present fighting sports that fall into these three categories. It is important to note that I do not analyze fighting styles that include weapons, for instance, fencing or Kali. When used in this book, the term fighting sports refers to striking and grappling in all of their cultural arts and iterations. Furthermore, most ancient historical accounts of fighting arts feature male athletes, so this historical section focuses on defining the various arts using male examples. We shall save the stories of women fighters for the bulk of the book and rely on the men to help define the particulars of striking, wrestling, and mixed discipline fighting sports.

  Striking Sports

  Striking sports are those in which one fighter hits his or her opponent with fists, forearms, elbows, knees, or shins. The most common striking sport is boxing, which has the restriction that fighters must hit solely with the hands to the upper portion of the body. There are numerous other popular sports that fall under the general heading of striking sports, including kickboxing and Muay Thai, and even more striking arts that, while not necessarily sport, provide foundational movements for MMA (discussed later in this section). Kickboxing incorporates kicks, along with blows to the lower body, into the sport of boxing. Muay Thai, the traditional sport of Thailand, adds elbow and knee strikes to its striking practice. Arts like Kenpo, tae kwon do, karate, and kung fu are also striking arts, and have their own realm of competition. While these martial arts, as well as kickboxing and Muay Thai, came to greater prominence in the Western world during the twentieth century, boxing is the more widely practiced striking art in the West.

  Boxing is often considered one of the world’s oldest sports, but it was not until the last few decades that women’s boxing became an officially sanctioned sport in the United States and abroad.[10] Social views of boxing vacillate greatly throughout the history of pugilism, from the noble discipline of Spartan warriors to the vile practice in the grimiest streets of eighteenth-century London. And although the sport of boxing continues to raise eyebrows and turn the stomachs of some fragile citizens, the sweet science has a history that unites the lives of noblemen and poor workers.

  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines boxing as “The action of fighting with fists.” This is boxing in its most basic form. OED continues by adding that boxing is “now usually applied to a pugilistic encounter in which the hands are covered with well-padded leather gloves.” But historical accounts of boxing suggest that the earliest practitioners of the sport fought bare-knuckled and sometimes to the death. Boxing was not the only striking fight style practiced in antiquity, but since most sources define it as punching rather than kicking, modern historians tend to place all ancient fighting styles under the “boxing” umbrella.

  Ancient Boxing History

  One of the earliest written accounts of an organized boxing match occurs in Homer’s The Iliad, a text considered a historical reference by ancient Greeks rather than our current classification as a literary masterpiece. The funeral games for the recently slain Patroclus included a prizefight in the “painful art of boxing.”[11] The first contender, Epeus, took the challenge (the prize being a mule) with a loquacious display, setting a precedent for the type of bravado that is now standard for any fighter. The man swaggered and declared,

  Let the man who is to have the cup come hither, for none but myself will take the mule. I am the best boxer of all here present, and none can beat me. Is it not enough that I should fall short of you in actual fighting? Still, no man can be good at everything. I tell you plainly, and it shall come true; if any man will box with me I will bruise his body and break his bones; therefore let his friends stay here in a body and be at hand to take him away when I have done with him.[12]

  Epeus’ boasting scared all the soldiers except for Euryalus, and the two prepared for the fight. Homer describes the match as follows:

  The two men being now girt went into the middle of the ring, and immediately fell to; heavily indeed did they punish one another and lay about them with their brawny fists. One could hear the horrid crashing of their jaws, and they sweated from every pore of their skin. Presently Epeus came on and gave Euryalus a blow on the jaw as he was looking round; Euryalus could not keep his legs; they gave way under him in a moment and he sprang up with a bound, as a fish leaps into the air near some shore that is all bestrewn with sea-wrack, when Boreas furs the top of the waves, and then falls back into deep water. But noble Epeus caught
hold of him and raised him up; his comrades also came round him and led him from the ring, unsteady in his gait, his head hanging on one side, and spitting great clots of gore.[13]

  Homer then explains other funereal contests in running and wrestling, which I examine in the following section on the history of wrestling. But this literary passage established boxing as a legitimate sport, practiced and celebrated by the heroic Greeks.

  Other early accounts of boxing exist in artwork and pottery. A beautifully preserved sixteenth-century B.C.E. fresco dubbed Boxing Boys from the island of Santorini shows two young men with long, dreaded hair and small loin cloths punching one another at close quarters. A fragment of a Mycenaenan pot circa 1300–1200 B.C.E. found in Cyprus features two stylized male figures striking at one another with extended arms.[14] Ancient sports reached the zenith in 776 B.C.E., with the inaugural Olympic Games, and in 688 B.C.E., boxing became an official sport. Ancient Olympic boxing matches had no ring, no rounds, no rests, and few rules. Boxers could strike while their opponent was down, and they fought until one of the fighters could not continue. Emperor Augustus apparently loved boxing matches and preferred them to all other gladiatorial events featured in the Colosseum. Seutonius claimed that while the emperor’s “chief delight was watching boxing,” he especially loved amateur bouts, “slogging matches between untrained roughs in narrow city alleys.”[15]

  Modern Boxing History

  The English Restoration released the puritanical restrictions on public entertainment lingering from the Middle Ages and allowed for various types of spectacles to be performed in designated areas in London and other cities. Boxing emerged as a popular spectacle, along with cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and the theater. The Protestant Mercury, a British newspaper, was the first to report a boxing match in 1681, with the Duke of Albemarle in attendance.[16] The aristocratic support of the sport hit an apex in 1723, when King George I ordered the construction of a ring in Hyde Park. The king’s support of boxing fostered an environment in which fighters received patronage from wealthy nobles, who supported their training and made heavy bets on the pugilists.

  The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries constituted Britain’s golden age of boxing, during which the sport became both a “science” and a manly art. Of course, the manliness of the sport did not restrict women from participating in the cultural surge. During a stay in London in 1768, historian William Hickey watched two “she-devils” “engaged in a scratching and boxing match, their faces entirely covered with blood, bosoms bare, and the clothes nearly torn from their bodies.”[17] Street fights were common in the back alleys and barrooms of cities, but women also participated in boxing in the public arena the same as many men in the eighteenth century. Chapter 1 is dedicated to the early modern female fighters who became darlings of the British media, and chapter 2 focuses on the sensations of early American tabloid culture.

  The American boxing obsession began in the early nineteenth century, with the 1816 fight between Jacob Hyer and Tom Beasley. Although there was no formal governing body established to enforce rules, it was said that there was “some attempt” at maintaining structure during the bout. New York was the home of the American boxing craze, and numerous individuals from all classes trained and sparred in new gyms that sprouted up throughout the city and state. Although upper-class and working-class men alike practiced boxing in the 1820s, a mere decade ended the gentlemanly involvement in the “manly art of self-defense,” as the sport was first titled. Critics deemed the sport violent; in a letter to the New York Post in 1826, the writer declares, “Such practices are brutal and detestable in themselves and disgraceful to the country in which they are suffered to take place. What is called by its advocates the science of defense, is only the commission, always of horrible violence, and sometimes murder.”[18]

  While this recriminative letter may seem hyperbolic, the dangerous reality of boxing made itself known in the 1842 bout between Thomas McCoy and Christopher Lilly. At this point in the history of American boxing, regulation existed only on a peripheral level, and bouts often went dozens or even hundreds of rounds. In the 120th round of the McCoy–Lilly fight, McCoy collapsed dead in the ring after receiving more than eighty direct blows. The inquest revealed that his lungs were filled with fluid, and he drowned in his own blood. McCoy’s death, the first in the American boxing arena, sparked outrage and provided prizefighting critics with new ammunition to use in their quest to outlaw the sport.[19] But boxing would persist in American culture, and in the late nineteenth century, fighters like John L. Sullivan reinvigorated interest in fighting. The twentieth century introduced the many greats of boxing in the United States, for example, Joe Louis, Jake LaMotta, and Muhammad Ali. And alongside the men, every step of the way in both the United States and England, women fought, sometimes in the shadows and other times in the limelight. This volume introduces many of these women, who were champions in their own right and often recognized as such by their male cohorts.

  Grappling Arts

  Like the striking category, grappling includes numerous popular subsets, from freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling to Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) and catch-as-catch-can wrestling. For the purposes of this book, grappling is a contest between two individuals who seek to control one another through submission holds and dominant positions. Grappling can take place standing, which is how most folk-style wrestling was practiced by workers who enjoyed wrestling recreationally but did not wish to soil their clothing in the dirt or mud. Grappling on the ground, which is part of catch wrestling; all styles of Olympic wrestling; and Brazilian jiu-jitsu mark the separation from the recreational standing style of country folks. These styles of grappling are practiced in a gym space, rather than on the grass after a long day in the fields. But all grappling styles are predicated on using strength and leverage to move or supplant an opponent.

  I use the term grappling because the Western conception of wrestling, which is based on Olympic rules, does not include the type of joint manipulations and choke holds found in BJJ and catch-as-catch-can wrestling. Also, the term wrestling often elicits the idea of professional wrestling, which, in its current format, is not a competitive sport, but a staged performance. There are numerous iterations of wrestling; however, the word wrestling has a connotation that points to either the Olympic sports or theatrical “professional wrestling.” Hence, it seems fitting to place these individual martial art subsets under the heading grappling, which can be summed up as gripping or controlling an opponent without strikes.

  Many traditional martial arts have a grappling component. Numerous small tribes in Africa and South America continue to compete in local wrestling events, and some martial arts, for instance, Japanese jiu-jitsu, use small joint manipulations to throw an opponent a great distance using a small movement. Thus, grappling is, in a way, an all-encompassing fighting art. In this book, the primary grappling sports explored are Olympic-style wrestling, BJJ, submission wrestling (also known as catch-as-catch-can or no-gi wrestling), and judo. These are the four primary subsets of grappling in which there exists a large competitive community and a primary governing body.

  Ancient Wrestling History

  Like boxing, the earliest literary account of wrestling occurs in Homer’s The Iliad. This seminal match was between two famous characters, Ajax and Ulysses.

  Forthwith uprose great Ajax the son of Telamon, and crafty Ulysses, full of wiles, rose also. The two girded themselves and went into the middle of the ring. They gripped each other in their strong hands like the rafters which some master-builder frames for the roof of a high house to keep the wind out. Their backbones cracked as they tugged at one another with their mighty arms—and sweat rained from them in torrents. Many a bloody weal sprang up on their sides and shoulders, but they kept on striving with might and main for victory and to win the tripod. Ulysses could not throw Ajax, nor Ajax him; Ulysses was too strong for him; but when the Achaeans began to tire of watching them, Ajax said to Ulysses, “U
lysses, noble son of Laertes, you shall either lift me, or I you, and let Jove settle it between us.”

  He lifted him from the ground as he spoke, but Ulysses did not forget his cunning. He hit Ajax in the hollow at back of his knee, so that he could not keep his feet, but fell on his back with Ulysses lying upon his chest, and all who saw it marvelled. Then Ulysses in turn lifted Ajax and stirred him a little from the ground but could not lift him right off it, his knee sank under him, and the two fell side by side on the ground and were all begrimed with dust. They now sprang towards one another and were for wrestling yet a third time, but Achilles rose and stayed them. “Put not each other further,” said he, “to such cruel suffering; the victory is with both alike, take each of you an equal prize, and let the other Achaeans now compete.”

  Thus did he speak and they did even as he had said, and put on their shirts again after wiping the dust from off their bodies.[20]

  A great deal of ancient art worldwide depicts men (and sometimes women) wrestling in various formats. Egyptians, Etruscans, Spartans, Vikings, Mayans, and other tribes practiced wrestling for sport.

  Modern Wrestling History

  Boxing may have had some semblance of respectability due to the promotion of the sport by British aristocrats, but wrestling was considered more of a country bumpkin activity. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wrestling was primarily practiced in rural areas amongst farm workers and other laborers. Wrestling, even more so than boxing, became a source of entertainment and spectacle in Britain and the United States in the twentieth century, but it has a rather grand history.